Mary has run a busy private teaching studio for many years. She is currently Head of Music & Singing at Millennium Performing Arts. She previously taught on the Royal Academy of Music's post-graduate musical theatre course, and she now directs regular Vocal Workout weekends for their Open Academy programme. Mary has been a regular guest teacher at the Royal Northern College of Music, where she was made an Honorary Fellow in Spring 2011. She currently works as vocal coach for a number of West End shows, including Wicked and Shrek the Musical.
Workshops and Masterclasses
Mary is regularly invited to devise and run all manner of workshops and vocal masterclasses for professional and non-professional groups in the UK and abroad. She has run workshops for all levels of student: from non--specialists to post-graduate students and professional singers at all the major opera houses and conservatoires across the UK. She has also coached a number of youth orchestras, including the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, to develop musicianship and ensemble work. Mary is a guest tutor on the Jerwood Opera Writing Programme for Aldeburgh Music and runs training sessions for the professional bodies that represent voice teachers, including the European Network for Opera and Dance Education (RESEO), the Association of Teachers of Singing (AOTOS), the British Voice Association and the International Congress of Voice Teachers. Subjects range from vocal health and hygiene, career pathways for emerging artists, education work for the developing professional singer to singing contemporary music and vocal improvisation. She has run workshops extensively in Britain, and further afield throughout Europe, as well as in the USA, Australia and Argentina.
ENO Baylis Mary’s long association with English National Opera (1989-2006) has incorporated work as a singer, a vocal animateur, and latterly Artistic Associate.
For their outreach programme, ENO Baylis, she ran a regular youth group called Live Culture, which developed in 1994 into The Knack, a part-time evening course which aimed to build a bridge into the singing profession for singers from a range of backgrounds. This ran for eleven years until Mary left ENO to set up Voicelab at The Southbank Centre. As Artistic Associate she also devised regular weekend workshops for non-professional singers on core company repertoire called ‘Know the Show’ which were attended by hundreds of participants and still continue today.
Berlin Philharmonic
Mary works regularly with the education department of the Berlin Philharmonic as a vocal animateur. Projects to-date have covered Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony and Orff’s Carmina Burana in Berlin, and a major school’s project in association with Carnegie Hall in Harlem and Manhattan, based on The Rite of Spring. Mary's most recent visit included running workshop and vocal skills training for members of the main orchestra.
Prison Work
She has also been involved with pioneering music education workshops in prisons. She has had a long association with Pimlico Opera, performing in their acclaimed productions of Sweeney Todd and Guys and Dolls in Wormwood Scrubs and Wandsworth, and in The Threepenny Opera in Downview. With the London Sinfonietta Mary has been involved in several creative projects in both Holloway and Pentonville.
Masterclasses
Mary has given numerous masterclasses, in both classical and musical theatre styles of music, ranging from work with professional choristers and young singers preparing for early grades, through to aspiring and emerging professional soloists. More recently she has also been giving day long workshops to non-professional choirs, who are seeking to develop their singing and communication skills.
